Social Services,,,,,right or wrong

Mother to fight bid to take baby

The baby was taken as part of a “birth plan”
A teenage mother from Nottingham who was reunited with her newborn baby by a judge will face a social services application to take the boy away again.
The baby was born to the 18-year-old, who has just left local authority care, in a hospital early on Wednesday.

A High Court judge ruled the boy was taken without a court order.

Solicitor Stuart Luke said the mother, who has mental health problems, would oppose any move to take the newborn boy away from her.

Social services will apply for an interim care order to magistrates sitting at a Family Court in Nottingham to remove the child from the mother’s care.

The boy was returned to his mother – who was taken into care after running away from home and starting to take drugs – about nine hours after being taken by social services staff.

Mother and child were reunited 46 minutes after Mr Justice Munby’s order

Stuart Luke, mother’s solicitor

Mr Luke said she was also launching a claim for damages against the social services officials “arising out of the unfortunate removal of her child without lawful authority shortly after his birth”.

The baby was taken after staff at the hospital were shown a “birth plan” that was prepared by social workers.

The plan said the mother, who had a troubled childhood and suffers from mental health problems, was to be separated from the child, and no contact would be allowed without supervision by social workers.

At the High Court, sitting in London, Mr Justice Munby said that “on the face of it” social services officials in Nottinghamshire had acted unlawfully because they had not obtained a court order.

He said removal of a child could only be lawful if a police constable was taking action to protect a child, or there was a court order in place.

Mr Luke, from the firm Bhatia Best, said: “Mother and child were reunited 46 minutes after Mr Justice Munby’s order at 1209.”

‘Intervention powers’

John Coughlan from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said the legal process was very clear.

“Every step of that process has got a very thorough series of checks and balances including independent representation across the piece for family, children and the local authorities, and very, very thorough court and judicial intervention powers,” he said.

The judge said Nottingham City Council’s social services must put in place a package of care to meet the mother’s immediate needs as a vulnerable person.

He also said the council must prepare a comprehensive amended “pathway plan” setting out proposals to assist her in the future by no later than 8 February.

I tried to find more on this this morning and I can’t. It does seem that Nottinghamshire social services did their work on this one, only thing they didn’t do was to obtain a court order and have an officer present.

She couldn’t have not known, the mother that is, as a plan it seems had been put into place that no contact would be allowed without supervised social workers in attendance.

Mental health problems, running away and drug taking. :roll: I wonder whats going to happen to the child in question if social services lose their case now and she retains full custody of the child. If anything happens to him are the usual army of do-gooders going to fall out of the woodwork and say they didn’t do their jobs correctly, should have done more, etc etc etc…….seems in some cases they can’t do right for doing wrong :roll: